Light has long been a word that is no longer frequently mentioned, just as the object it refers to is no longer used in daily life. A lamp refers to a small and shallow bowl. So what is making a lamp? Jianzhan refers to the porcelain tea lamp fired in Fujian kiln. Generally speaking, this kind of cup has a wide mouth and small feet, a thick carcass and a rough texture. The lower part of the outer wall and the cup bottom are exposed because they are not glazed. The porcelain tire and glaze of Jianzhan are also produced in Jianyang, where the kiln was built. Because of its high iron content and thick porcelain tire, the exposed carcass is grayish black, commonly known as iron tire. Its glaze color is dark, blue-black or purple. Because the high temperature in the kiln can reach 1350 degrees Celsius during the firing process, iron ions in the glaze will precipitate and flow on the glaze, forming a unique and wonderful pattern, the so-called "rabbit hair" pattern, which is why Jianzhan is better called rabbit hair.
Chinese civilization is the only ancient civilization that has been passed down in an orderly way in modern society and is still flourishing today. However, the eternal romance, vicissitudes of life and the wisdom of the ancients that passed away in the long river of history are also unforgettable. Some of them can be recovered in later generations, which can be said to be fortunate in misfortune, and building kiln tea lamps is one of them.
The heyday of Jianzhan was in the Song Dynasty and ended in the Song Dynasty. Sword lamp has always been the best tea drinking utensil, which is contested by nobles and played by literati. However, building a lamp is valued by people today, but it was in the past ten years. Friends who like porcelain should not know much about making lanterns if they consult the materials since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and some are only scales and claws, which are vague. In fact, since the Yuan Dynasty, the building of kiln site has been gradually deserted, and by the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the building of kiln site was almost forgotten. What is the reason? Let's take a look at a record in Tai Qing Lou Shi Yan in the Northern Song Dynasty, starting from the heyday of Jianzhan.
In March of the second year of Zhenghe in the Northern Song Dynasty, He Chun Jingming, the imperial court backyard, Taiqing Building, Hongan Gong Temple and Song Huizong hosted a banquet for Cai Jing. Wine bottles, jewels, coloured glaze, agate, crystal, glass, jadeite and beautiful jade collected by the Neifu are all listed. ......
After drinking, Huizong personally ordered tea. Tea only ordered a clear spring, a lamp and a few cakes of tea, which seemed a little out of harmony with the environment, but Cai Jing, the host and guest, was full of pride. Cai Jing knows this elegant tea like the back of his hand, and all kinds of utensils are already familiar with it. Qingquan is the stone spring of Huishan Temple in Wuxi, which is about 0/500 Li away from Beijing/KLOC. It is difficult to get spring water. Dark teacups and cake-shaped group teas are both from Jiangxi, Cai Jing's hometown. The glaze of Jianzhan is blue and black, such as river and sea condensation, floating light flashing, but deep and steady.
So what's so good about this little black bowl? Even if there are some patterns similar to rabbits, they are still short and thick. How can they be elegant? In fact, the floor lamp is dim at first glance, but if you look closely, you will find that the blue and black glaze is as bright as black jade, and the ingenious pattern is like rabbit hair, or like silver ping, or like stars, or like mountains and seas, which is fascinating and fascinating! Only by deep appreciation can we find its wonderful. When people in Song Dynasty admire swords, they will watch them in the sun, so that they can see the charming patterns more clearly. Now, with the help of a magnifying glass, we can easily enter the gorgeous world of sword fighting, but when we come out, we are often dizzy because we linger for too long. The beauty of building a lamp is quiet and unobtrusive. This kind of beauty was never colorful, choppy and unattractive at first. Just stay there, quiet as a virgin, waiting for someone who can appreciate the beauty of the building to fall into it. As we all know, this kind of beauty is physically exhausting, but the key is to rely on nature. The great beauty is often Wan Li, and the unique products such as obsidian transformation and otherness can only pray for the gift of the kiln god. No wonder even the elegant Emperor Song Like Hui Zong regarded it as pearls and jade.
In the history of porcelain, only in the Song Dynasty did a famous kiln burn only one kind of utensils, that is, the kiln building (of course, it is not absolute, for example, the kiln building also produces some trivial utensils such as oil lamps, but it can be ignored compared with the lamp building). The official kiln basically only produces black glazed teacups, but this single black glazed teacup, under the joint action of artificial essence and ingenuity, has transformed thousands of colorful and endless beauty, and has become a weapon for tea fighting, which is cherished by contemporary people and respected by the royal family, thus driving many kiln mouths to compete for imitation at that time. Two thirds of the kilns in this country produce black glazed teacups. Ding kilns, Cizhou kilns and Yaozhou kilns in the north, Jizhou kilns in the south and other kilns in Fujian all have similar imitations. They imitate rabbit hair patterns and oil drop patterns in various ways, but the beauty of building kilns is always unattainable. All kinds of striped black glazed lamps produced in the kiln have always been regarded as treasures by tea people. Su Dongpo wrote in "Seeing off Nanping Modest Teacher": "The Taoist priest went out to Nanping Mountain to try tea samadhi, and suddenly he was surprised by rabbit fur spots in the afternoon and made a spring altar goose wine." Here Dongpo shares the rabbit hair spotlight, which should be made in the early stage, with thin stripes and blocks, which do not meet the standards of rabbit hair. However, when ordering tea, it reflects the faint green tea soup, which is enough for people to sip tea and be full of spring.
The lantern looks ordinary, but it is simple and not monotonous, simple and not vulgar, and it can withstand the fine products from time to time and play every day. The glaze is deep and bright, so tea is appropriate. The logo is simple and peaceful, but it is changeable, and there are all kinds of famous products. In particular, there is a kind of obsidian spot, the dream is like the starry sky in the universe, and the blue light shines, which makes people unable to meditate and indulge. Later, two obsidians turned into lights and flowed eastward to Japan, where they were acquired by Nobunobu, the Japanese overlord at that time, and regarded them as treasures. According to legend, one was destroyed by the change of Beneng Temple, and died with Oda Nobuyuki. The other one has been handed down to this day and is regarded as a national treasure of Japan.
Since the Yuan Dynasty, the evolution of tea drinking has gradually lost its dominant position. In the Ming Dynasty, ordering tea was finally replaced by making tea. The decline of tea picking also led to the decline of Jianzhan. With the kiln gradually changing to celadon, the fire of building a lamp with black glaze was finally extinguished in the Ming Dynasty. The precious sword lamp, once treasured by emperors and pulp sellers, quietly disappeared in history. It is conceivable that the precious lanterns left by the tea party were smashed into pieces in restaurants, banquets and soup pots, and then the abandoned ditches disappeared. When Zhu Quan wrote Tea Spectrum in Ming Dynasty, he explained Jian 'an in this way: "Tea Ou, produced in Jian 'an, was commonly used by the ancients, and it was strange to take its loose rabbit hair. Today's kiln is built with lamps, and the tea is not clear. It is better to spare porcelain and note that Chaze is innocent and lovely. "
Oh! Less than 200 years after the demise of the Southern Song Dynasty, Zhu Quan, a tea master, seems to have lost sight of the usage of Jianzhan, let alone appreciated its cuteness and charm! Since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, blue and white porcelain tea sets have prevailed in the world, and purple sand teapots have also dominated, and they are still flourishing today. However, Jianzhan really disappeared in the long dust of history, only occasionally seeing its shadow from ancient books, or disappearing between the pottery pots and porcelain plates in antique shops, waiting for a price. As for drinking tea, it has nothing to do with it.
I don't know if it's lucky or unlucky. While advocating the study of China culture, Japan in the East also inherited some elegant things like tea, and gradually formed a kind of almost religious "tea ceremony" in Japan. Jianzhan is still the protagonist of the tea ceremony there, and all the surviving lanterns have become masterpieces because China stopped building kilns. According to "Notes on the Left and Right Account of Juntaiguan" published by Japan 15 1, the obsidian point-built lamp is the supreme product, worth thousands of silks; Oil drop spotlight is two treasures, worth 5 thousand silks; A rabbit's bonnet is worth three thousand silk. Converted by people who are good at something, obsidian lighting is worth more than 700 kilograms of gold, oil drop lighting is worth more than 360 kilograms, and rabbit lighting is worth 2 10 kilograms of gold. Moreover, most of the fine architectural lights circulating in Japan are placed on the booths of major art galleries for people to enjoy, and some famous products are also listed as national treasures.
Black glazed teacups such as Jianzha were first brought back to China by Japanese monks studying abroad with tea. In ancient Japanese literature, Jianzhan is obviously different from other China black glazed lamps. Because most monks studying abroad are studying in temples on Tianmu Mountain outside Lin 'an, there is a kind of black glazed tea lamp in Japan-Tianmu lamp. With the gradual formation and development of Japanese tea ceremony, the attitude towards valuable Tang wares is also changing. Mori Riky, a master of tea ceremony, summed up the spirit of tea ceremony: harmony, respect, purity and silence make people turn to simple Japanese native ceramic teacups. The status of Jianzhan and Tianmu lamps gradually declined, and in this process, the boundary between Jianzhan and Tianmu lamps became blurred. /kloc-After the 9th century, the concept of "Tianmuzhan" has included the teacups from Jian Yao and Jizhou kilns, as well as all other teacups with bunches, deep bellies and high circles. Tianmu has become the name of a teacup variety, whether it is produced in China or Japan.
However, the lofty status of Jianzhan has always made Japanese tea people yearn for and admire its origin, and Jianzhan, which is called "black bowl boy" by Jianyang fellow villagers, has infinite attraction to them. According to records, since the beginning of19th century, the Japanese have been visiting Jianyang, even learning to make Jianzhan, and made a systematic analysis and scientific research on Jianzhan. In China, archaeological excavations have been carried out in Jianyang since1960s, and 200 1 kiln sites have been listed as national cultural relics protection units.
The fire of building kilns has been rekindled, thanks to the development of national economy, the prosperity of society has revived the traditional tea drinking habit, and the revival of culture has also made people pay attention to their own national civilization and various traditional customs. In recent years, a large number of cultural relics of the Song Dynasty have been unearthed in Jian Yao site, and the state administrative department does not prohibit folk excavation. A large number of excavations have formed a big market for building lamps in kiln sites, which has also promoted its popularity among tea lovers. With the gradual depletion of unearthed architectural lamps, local practitioners and firing artists set up workshops and kiln factories for antique new lamps. Together with Japanese imitators and manufacturers in Taiwan Province Province, new lamps are becoming more and more popular and have started to have their own stable consumer market.
Because the pattern of sword lamp is formed by the natural flow of glaze in high-temperature kiln fire, there are no two identical lamps in the world, and each lamp is an orphan, which is worth reading, playing with and collecting.
Some people say that you can't see the brown color when drinking tea with the built lamp, which is not suitable for the current tea making method. It is true that the dark brown in the black glazed teacup is not easy to distinguish, and the size of the teacup seems to be slightly larger than that of the ordinary teacup, but the black glazed teacup has a unique advantage-it can appreciate the dense fog in the teacup. Pour the tea into the cup, the water is swaying and the fog is transpiration. If it is not true, this is a rare sight in any blue and white porcelain cup.
If you build a lamp in your hand, it's not just tea when you drink tea. In the fragrance, you have a moment of leisure, you can think about the ages and recite the lyrics. Suddenly, I will realize that 800 years ago, those masters who were familiar with history were holding such utensils, sipping soup and pitching the world. Nowadays, although times have changed, things have changed, but it seems that the distance with them is closer than before, because the gap in ideological realm is too difficult to make up, and things have changed, which seems to be a shortcut. For hundreds of years, it is the luck of making lamps, and it is also the luck of people today. Whether we appreciate it or not, Jianzhan has returned to our vision. At least when we appreciate the articles of Song Ci, we can hold the same wonderful lanterns and sip tea. The veins are endless, and so are the lights!